Ok, first of all, apologies, we were in Guilin yesterday, not whatever it was I typed. And I believe I was just heading in to dinner. Afterwards, we piled back on the bus to drive to the Li River in town and board another ship! This one cruised very slowly up the river as farmers poled bamboo rafts along either side. They train cormorants to fish for them by tying a piece of string around their necks. The string is just loose enough to let the birds eat small fish, but prevents them from swallowing larger fish. When they catch one too big to eat, they come back to the raft and the farmer just kind of pushes the fish back up it's throat and into a basket. I have no freakin' idea how someone came up with that trick! It was fun to watch though, as the cormorants must be related to herons, only in dark colours and the water was shallow enough to see them gliding along the bottom, looking for fish. The only problem was that my camera is just a point and click, so I don't know how well the pictures will turn up. We'll see when I get 'em on a bigger screen.
After getting off the boat, we took a quick jaunt through town to see some of the pretty views. All the cities we've seen have been very good about incorporating green spaces throughout the urban and in Guilin, they are all lit up at night. It was about 9pm, and everyone was out: eating, dancing, singing - it seemed like a pretty cool place to live.
Oh, while I'm thinking about it, a quick note on the weather. Apparently, Auntie Eileen warned Mom to be prepared to deal with a lot of rain and cool-ish weather, since we are heading into that season. But no, it's been uniformly gorgeous, with the temperatures in Northern China in the high teens or low twenties. The last 5-6 days as we move south, the daytime temperatures have climbed into the high twenties or low thirties, with a lot of sun. Despite copious applications of sunblock, I managed to pick up a bit of a burn yesterday on the boat.
This morning after breakfast, we caught the bus out to Reed Flute Cave. I don't remember if I mentioned it, but the mountains in the area are all limestone (it used to be a sea) and are full of caves. The Reed Flute Cave is a huge complex full of stalactite and stalagnite formations that are spectacular - especially once they finish rigging them up with coloured lights! They also have a little side cave that only Karen and I nipped into, where they keep tortoises. They have three that are over 1000 years old. And a whole bunch of adorable little ones. :)
From the cave, we headed straight out to the airport for our flight to Shanhai. Everyone was warning us that the airport there was one of the strictest in China, and people are starting to push their weight limits, so we were a bit worried, but we got through with less hassle than anywhere else so far. Who knows? It was supposed to be a two hour flight, but I think the pilot has frustrated dreams of being a stock car driver, so we got in 20 minutes early and landed with a bump and a wiggle.
Shanghai is big. Square kilometer wise, it's the biggest city in China. And it's all very recent: 20 years ago they had 5 buildings over 20 stories tall, now I swear to god the local guide said there are over 4300! It's a really strange mixture too; giant post-modern buildings with 3 story tall led advertising boards have alleyways of 80 year old two story relics crouched at their feet. The highway through the city was raised up a couple of stories and had led signs, but there is still laundry hung to dry in the windows. I've only been here a couple of hours, but it already strikes me as a strange place.
Our hotel is... indescribable, but I'll try. For starters, it has an absolutely huge and completely unforgivable fountain in front. It's a round pool with a giant gilded bull on a pedestal surrounded by cavorting nymphs and cupids and far too much more gold paint. The interior isn't so bad, in fact the marble inlaid butterflies in the floor are quite pretty, but above ground level, there's still way too much gold. The rooms are absolutely the most luxurious so far, and if I have a chance to go swimming in the tub, I might forgive Peter for making me go passed that fountain twice a day.
So that's it for now. In about 15 minutes, we leave for dinner and to take a night cruise to see the city. Type at you tomorrow!
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